Monday, February 26, 2007

YouTube watermarks

Some of the material on video sites like YouTube is "re-purposed", which is a polite way of saying it was uploaded without the copyright holder's permission.

Now, US company Digimarc, which specialises in image recognition and watermarking, has been granted a patent for a novel way of tackling the problem. Instead of preventing copyright infringement altogether, it would turn it into a commercial advantage.

A TV station or movie studio embeds an invisible watermark in whatever it broadcasts. This is done by producing a copy of the original material but with key areas of the image imperceptibly distorted in shape, colour or brightness. The difference between the original and the copy is expressed as a digital code which identifies the copyright owner. The slightly distorted copy is released for TV while the pure original is kept in the owner's vault.

When the clip then reappears on the web, its owner can automatically be identified and viewers can be targeted with adverts that generate revenue for the original copyright owner.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Fraud-proof phones

If your cellphone is ever stolen, or perhaps "borrowed" by a friend or one of the kids, then hopefully you remembered to lock it with a password. Few people do this, however, as it is such a pain to enter a code each time you want to make a call.

IBM has come up a very simple and sensible alternative. Under a special new setting, personal contact numbers stored on the device are marked as "OK-to-dial" without a password. But new numbers and international or premium ones all require a password to connect. Of course, adding someone to the phone's memory also requires the correct password.

So if a thief steals your phone and tries to call a number not in the memory, the phone prompts them for the right code. If the wrong one is entered, the device shuts down completely until it is inputted.

The only slight inconvenience is the need to enter a code before making international calls or phoning a new number. But that's a small price to pay for peace of mind, I'd say.

Yahoo! was granted the patent on the basis of work that took place in the late 1990's at the height of the dotcom bubble. So could Yahoo! now ask for royalties from various Web 2.0 companies out there?

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Invisible watermarks

No more fiddling those expenses. Fuji Xerox of Japan has come up with a cunning plan to foil attempts to tamper with paper documents.

The text on a protected document is printed in normal, visible ink, made from a mix of magenta, cyan and yellow dyes. However, a fine pattern of dots that form slanting lines is also printed over the text, using ink made of copper and phosphorus oxides, which are invisible to the naked eye.

The invisible ink absorbs infra red light but the visible dye does not. So, when the document is scanned with a wide band light source, the scanner captures an image of the text on top of the pattern. If any of the text has been altered ? for instance, one number replaced with another, or a decimal point moved ? the image should reveal a very obvious hole in the dot pattern, since one of the dots will have been overwritten or rubbed out.

The exact angle of the invisible slanting lines created by the dots also conveys a code that adds an extra layer of security.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Hot lap prevention

Anyone who uses a laptop computer will know just how hot they can get. This overheating can sometimes cause injury, and may even reduce male fertility, if a user fails to notice how hot their machine is getting.

Intel is patenting a solution which uses light to sense when a computer casing is getting too hot, and automatically "throttles back" the power.

Since heating is uneven inside a laptop, with hot spots occurring near power-hungry components, ordinary thermometers are an unreliable way to determine whether someone is risking a scorched lap. Instead, Intel reckons a simple light sensor could provide a much better early warning system.

The inside skin of a laptop is coated with a thermochromic material (one that changes colour in response to temperature). A lamp inside the chassis then continually illuminates this material and a sensor measures the colour of the reflected light ? from cold green to warm red.

This provides a temperature reading for the part in direct contact with the user's lap. The sensor closely monitors any change and, when it starts getting too warm, software activates a fan to cool things down. At a higher temperature threshold the processing speed of the computer's main chip is also throttled back to reduce heating.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Walking dinosaur

Disney is normally very secretive about the technology used in its theme parks. Sometimes, though, a patent spills the beans. The latest application from Disney reveals a giant walking robot, called Lucky, which should be better at walking about without falling over.

Lucky is a two legged Dinosaur made from glass fibre and latex foam, and yoked to a two wheeled wooden cart like a rickshaw, capable of carrying several passengers.

The dinosaur's body contains up to forty electric and hydraulic motors which move his legs, head and tail, with power for the motors coming from the cart via wires and tubes hidden in the yoke. A driver sits in the cart and uses a games joystick to control the motors. Lucky appears to pull the driver along, while actually the cart's powered wheels push the walking dinosaur forwards.

The smart part is that whatever Lucky does ? even pretending to sneeze ? he cannot topple over since the yoke securely locks him to the cart. You might say Disney has created what Nature never intended: a two-legged monster on wheels.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Underground GPS

Satellite navigation is becoming a vital tool for the modern motorist. But GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers need to compare signals from at least three orbiting satellites to determine their position. This means satellite navigation does not normally work inside a tunnel, underground or in a heavily built up area.

Two inventors from Cambridge in the UK are now patenting a system that could let satellite equipment acquire positioning information even when satellite signals are blocked.

The roof of the building, or the ground above the tunnel, is fitted with at least four directional antennae focused on different patches of the sky. These antennae receive GPS signals, then amplify and re-broadcast them using transmitters positioned at specific points below ground.

A GPS device is then fooled into behaving as if it were out in the open, providing accurate positional data from inside a tunnel, in an underground car park or in a heavily built up city. The same trick could also let GPS devices work inside buildings.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Edible RFID

Inventors keep coming up with new ways to exploit RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. The latest brainwave, from Kodak, is to use them to probe a person's digestive system.

RFID tags are tiny radio chips that resonate with a single echo when hit with a radio trigger. Kodak?s digestible tags are harmless and intentionally fragile. The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.

They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient's digestive tract.

Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Phone 'pollution' solution

Another patent from Philips should be welcomed by those who worry about ever-increasing radio wave pollution.

The digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (DECT) system is widely used for cordless phones in homes and offices, but the Dutch electronics giant thinks it could easily be made more efficient.

The DECT standard, established in 1991, requires a base station to continually transmit a pulsed signal to all its handsets. Although this basic requirement cannot be changed, Philips thinks it would be far simpler to sometimes send the signal by wire instead of radio.

A base station would simply need to be plugged into the mains power supply. While each handset is charged, the pulsed signal could piggy-back on the smooth mains frequency.

The base station could stop sending radio waves as soon as a handset is placed in a charging cradle and transmission would only start again once the handset is removed.

"Electromagnetic pollution of the environment is reduced significantly," says Philips. "The possibility of negative effects on human health, which may be caused by the electromagnetic energy, can be reduced and eventually can be totally excluded."

Saturday, February 10, 2007

On-road warning signs

Philips thinks so and proposes attaching laser projectors, each with a rapidly-moving mirror that deflects its beam, to ordinary lampposts. These would be used to project images and words onto the road just ahead of approaching cars.

The solution would be cheaper than installing a large video display and safer too, since drivers would not need to take their eyes off the road. Also, a warning about ice or danger on the road ahead would not need a full colour screen, so the projector could use just a single-colour laser.

Each lamppost would have its own IP address and would connect wirelessly, or via a cable, to a central traffic control centre. The projectors could also tap into the power already used to illuminate streetlamps.

As well as providing warning signs, the laser projectors could paint temporary lanes onto the road, steering traffic round an obstruction, or away from the main highway and onto a side road. It's a neat idea, but how well would it work in busy traffic?

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Fast charger

Having your cellphone run out of juice just when you need it is a latterday hassle we can all do without. To the rescue comes Nokia of Finland, which on 1 February applied for a US patent on a spare cellphone power supply that you can carry around with you. It gives you enough power to recharge your phone - and importantly (in case of an emergency) uses a smart circuit to instantly give you enough power for one very quick phone call.

Nokia?s patent application (US 2007/0024238) covers a charger for a new type of cellphone or PDA - one fitted with both an induction coil and an RFID tag. The cigarette-packet-sized portable charging device contains a rechargeable battery (or a methanol fuel cell), an induction coil circuit, including an output capacitor, and an RFID tag reader.

Here?s how the patent suggests it will work: when your phone battery dies on you, the mobile charger (which you have of course remembered to charge at home, or filled with methanol) is brought into contact with the phone. A mating hook fits in a hole on the phone to get the alignment right. After the RFID reader has read the power requirement of the phone, the charger?s battery energises its induction coil via a DC to AC converter.

The alternating electromagnetic field this produces induces a current in the phone?s coil, recharging the phone?s battery. But there?s one more trick: the battery?s power reaches the AC/DC converter via a capacitor, which stores up powerful bursts of power. This, says Nokia, very quickly gives the phone enough juice to make a quick call.

The best thing? If the technology catches on, it could put an end to one kind of office spam: those asking for phone chargers....

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

'Upside down' mobile phone

Mobile phone manufacturers come up with new designs all the time. But inventor Anthony Harrison, from London, reckons they've been getting it backwards, or rather upside down, from the start.

Harrison thinks phones with the display below, rather than above, the keypad would be easier to use. That way the whole thing sits in the palm of the hand with the user's thumbs on the keypad at the top.

The conventional arrangement requires the top half of a phone to extend out of the top of the user's hand. Harrison claims his way is more comfortable and secure.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Covert iris scanner

Sarnoff Labs in New Jersey, US, has been working on a clever homeland security system for the US government. It scans people's irises as they walk towards a checkpoint, without them even knowing it.

Current systems require a person to stand still and look directly into a single digital camera from close range. The new system will instead use an array of compact, high resolution cameras, all of which point in slightly different directions and focus at slightly different distances.

As a subject walks into range, a sensor triggers a powerful infrared strobe light. The strobing is synchronised with the camera exposures, illuminating pictures of a subject's face thirty times per second, to create a bank of different images.

At least one of these shots should provide a clear, high-definition image of the target's iris. Clarity could also be enhanced by combining two similar shots. Sarnoff reckons this could be done at a distance around 3 metres, and a database could be queried fast enough to sound the alarm if the subject warrants a closer check. Let's just hope the target is not wearing sunglasses.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Deep fried detector

Here?s an idea for anyone who's felt sick after eating greasy fried food. Honeywell, based in New Jersey, US, has come up with an acoustic wave sensor that fits inside a deep fryer and constantly monitors the quality of cooking oil.

Fatty acids build up as oil is used in a fryer and eventually becomes deposited on food cooked in this way. Ultimately, this can cause indigestion for those who eat deep fried foods, Honeywell warns. Its acoustic sensor could detect this build up and warn a chef that the oil needs changing.

The system consists of an antenna that generates acoustic waves and a transducer made from a piezoelectric component, which picks up the acoustic wave and converts it into an electrical signal. The sensor is coated with material that reacts with fatty acids.

The acoustic waveform is damped and modified as fatty acids attach. A connected computer analyses this waveform signal and issues a warning to change the oil when it builds up too much.